


The Light Has Been Mined From Me (burned for heat)

by Bakageta



Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Brief suicidal ideation, Denial of Feelings, Depersonalization, Depression, F/M, Gen, Good support network, Happy Ending, Multi, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-17
Updated: 2019-02-17
Packaged: 2019-10-30 09:12:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17825945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bakageta/pseuds/Bakageta
Summary: After everything, Eddie lays in an awkward old/new space and realizes that Venom’s gone and he’s an empty vessel.Worse, he’s not just empty, he’s broken (again), and he’s not sure if there’s enough pieces left to be put back together this time.





	1. Check My Chest And You'll See

**Author's Note:**

> I started this fic in November 2018 as a bit of an outlet when I was feeling pretty strongly depressed. I wrote the first one and a half chapters before I felt better and set it aside until last week. 
> 
> The shape of Eddie's depression is heavily based on my own, though I've never personally had any suicidal ideation.
> 
> There is a brief moment of suicidal ideation in chapter 1 and this moment is mentioned in chapter 2, it is not acted upon.
> 
> Depersonalization is a strong part of the first half of the fic, Eddie feels unreal, distant, and like he is a thing rather than a person. This stops by the end of chapter 2.

After everything, after the whole LIFE Foundation Drake/Riot shitshow.

After Eddie struggles to shore and then struggles not to swim back out into the bay and keep swimming til he can’t.

After Annie finds him and brings him to Dan to patch back together ( _do whatever you need, no MRI, but whatever else, I don’t care_ ).

After they’ve bandaged up his scrapes and bruises and put ice followed by heating pads on his still tender chest and back where a matching pair of silvery-white recently long healed scars sit.

After they all ride to Annie’s apartment that she shares with Dan (which used to be Annie’s apartment that she shared with Eddie) enveloped in a murky silence that’s more tired than it is uncomfortable.

After he’s settled down for the night on their old couch with an unfamiliar new blanket and Annie and Dan have turned off all the lights and all but tucked him into bed like he’s five years old.

After all that shit, Eddie lays in an awkward old/new space and realizes that Venom’s gone and he’s an empty vessel.

Worse, he’s not just empty, he’s broken (again), and he’s not sure if there’s enough pieces left to be put back together this time.

He falls asleep after that, the knowing taking the last of his energy and shuffling him off into blank empty sleep that’s nowhere near restful.

But at least he doesn’t dream.

==========

When Eddie wakes he’s grey. There’s a dull apathy and emptiness that doesn’t fill him (it can’t because he’s empty) so much as make up his entire being.

And this isn’t entirely new. He’s had grey periods in his life for as long as he could remember, some (he fucked his own life so hard that he brought Annie, dear, sweet, beautiful, perfect Annie down with him and it’s all his fault, who even does that? No one does, and it made sense because he’s not entirely sure he’s someone) worse than others (fleeing New York full of gray righteous anger that fades to just grey on the long flight to California). But it’s never been this bad.

He should get up. He should shower. He should eat breakfast. There’s a lot of things he should do.

Eddie’s pretty sure he should get up and attempt to function as a human being but…

Nothing feels real.

Annie and Dan have both gone off to work. He knows this because they left him a note on the coffee table, something along the lines of making himself at home and taking the time he needs to heal, that he stops reading halfway through. It’s nice that they care enough for someone like A+ number one fuckup Eddie Brock to let him into their home, but he can feel the guilt and depersonalization smothering him and can’t help but wish that they’d stayed home to remind him of how being a person worked.

Intellectually, he knows that he’s a person, with opinions and feelings and all that shit. He knows he has responsibilities and commitments that may or may not still exist after the shit-fiasco that made up the last two days. He knows that for some reason Annie still cares enough to take him in despite all he’s done. He knows he should have feelings, that he should move forward, that he should have agency.

Eddie knows all that but he doesn’t believe it. He feels like an object with a point of view.

Even if he felt like a thing, though, he’s a thing that’s aware of commitments and obligations and The Expectations of Society. And when he’d been grey after New York (and after Annie) he’d had society to fall back on. It’s expected that you have a job so he looked for one. It’s expected that humans interact with each other so he went out and talked with Maria and Mrs. Chen. It’s expected that you maintain your living space and your self so he did the bare minimum (the dishes may pile up but they don’t sit long enough to get moldy, the laundry gets done even if he never actually folds it, he may not floss but at least he fucking brushes his teeth).

But what are the expectations after you've been put through trauma after trauma for two days straight followed by having your alien brain buddy (they were more than that, undescribably more than that, but if Eddie was a thing then at least the loss couldn’t hurt and maybe if he told himself that enough it would be true) sacrifice themselves in a fiery blaze of glory and tragedy.

Eddie doesn’t know.

So he sits on the couch, TV on and spewing white noise in the form of daytime programming, and drifts in and out of awareness. At some point he got up and made a sandwich, more because he thinks he should eat something than that he’s actually hungry (and that’s another stab in the gut, for the first time since he met Venom he’s not starving-empty- **hungry** - **need-to-hunt** and he misses it). He gets about four bites in before his throat tightens with grief-depression-anxiety-nausea and he stops being able to swallow.

He feels guilty about the waste so he hides the remains of the sandwich under a paper towel in the trash can.

He settles for getting his calories via Pepsi ( _fuel for the tank_ he thinks with a bitter laugh), it’s not good by any stretch of the imagination but it’s what Eddie can do as he is now.

==========

Eventually Annie (that’s probably too familiar a name, he should call her Anne, but he thinks that any more distance between him and one of his ~~three~~ two remaining ~~friends~~ acquaintances might be the end of him) comes home and finds him still on the couch.

There’s sadness and confusion and something like pity but kinder in her eyes when she looks at him.

It’s okay, he thinks, she’s seen him (not this bad, but almost) this bad before.

===========

He doesn't remember, but he does dream.

There is a room bisected by a thick pane of glass, thicker than the width of a hand. Both sides are dim and dingy and chill and most of all quiet. Eddie is on one side, the air clear but somehow smothering. He could move, could stand, could pace, but instead he sits with his back to the glass, his legs splayed in front of him.

On the other side of the glass there is only a swirling, opaque, grey fog.


	2. Can You Hear The Relief

One week later and Eddie’s not doing too much better, but he’s not doing worse and he thinks that’s something at least.

At first Annie had been very concerned about his stability and it had been hard to explain that he had no intention of killing himself (he was a thing following what was expected of a person and people were expected to do everything they could to keep living, even if he had come close in the immediate aftermath with the bay’s water calling him to join his parasite/symbiote/friend/other half). Eventually, part way through the first week, she believed him and settled for getting him functional again just like she had after New York. A set of guidelines for him to at least try to follow.

A structure for him to base himself off of until he could remember that he was a person and not a thing.

(late nights Eddie can hear them talk, they’re worried but even they realize that if they send him to a therapist nothing will happen because he ~~can’t~~ won’t talk about his other and everything that happened and everything they ~~mean~~ meant to him)

He eats many small meals to get enough food despite the way it all tastes terrible ( _dead_ ), he tidies Annie’s apartment, dishes done by hand and not in the dishwasher (it’s easy once he’s started and hand washing keeps him busy longer), he does laundry. There are still times where he falls into stillness on the couch but not as much as on that first day after (after the remains of his life finished falling apart).

The second week Annie works on getting Eddie to go outside.

First he walks around the block, the next day he goes out twice.

He works up to spending more and more time outside and it helps in a way that Annie’s framework couldn’t quite manage because he is out among other people (and he can, for a few hours, almost remember that he’s a person).

The middle of the week after that Annie and Dan invite him to the beach off of Golden Gate Park after dinner.

He goes because he has nothing better to do and because he’s been so empty and apathetic and numb that he’s kind of wondering if he’s able to feel anything even if it’s pain.

==========

There’s no view of the husk of the LIFE foundation or its incongruous launch pad from the beach. Eddie knows because he looked once (that’s a fucking lie, he’d fucking stared at the little he could see of the north shore until Annie caught his desperate gaze and broke it with a sad shake of her head and she’d caught all his glances since then) and all he could see was the distance hazed slump of Point Bonita.

Ocean Beach is the same as it ever was, huge in the low tide and big enough that Annie and Dan and Eddie aren’t crowded despite the number of people. They’re all braced against the piercing chill of the wind, standing shoulder to shoulder. The water’s cold (it always is, and Eddie feels a desperate brief longing for the relatively warmer hold of the ~~symbiote~~ Atlantic) and he doesn’t need the exclamations of tourists to tell him that.

The sun is setting, casting a line of fire (not that, too close, hurts too much) orange light (that’s abstract enough, yeah) into the steel grey of the ocean. The horizon is also shaded a firey (stop that) deep red-orange (better) as the haze refracts the sun's color for miles along earth’s longitude. Windswept clouds gleam gold over it all.

Eddie feels human enough alongside his friends and the anonymous numbers of people sharing the beach to appreciate the sunset for the first time in what is probably months.

(should he be able to feel this without Venom?) A pang of misery rises up to--

Warmth.

(it’s not his)

Contentment.

(still not his)

Pleasure.

(definitely not fucking his)

Someone else’s emotions quirk the edges of Eddie’s mouth up and he maintains the smile long after their strength fades.

==========

On the way back to Annie’s, wedged against the rear passenger door of her SUV (don’t think about the first time, the time with the apology and the crushing certainty that he was going to die and then kill everyone else with a literal fucking alien invasion), the smile fades from Eddie’s face.

Someone else is still there (they shouldn’t be) pacing through him, distant agitation and concern almost pressing into his mind.

(how can they be there, Eddie’s been broken and empty and a thing for more than two weeks now)

(why are they here why aren’t they dead why didn’t they come back sooner)

(why don’t they speak)

(are they really there)

A not insignificant part of Eddie wonders if he’s actually had a small psychotic break (like the lobster tank but quieter) because ~~Venom~~ they’re dead and it doesn’t matter how alien you are dead is dead. It’s more comforting to not hope, if you expect nothing you won’t be disappointed (and fuck isn’t that a shitty outlook, but anything else HURTS). In the end it doesn't really matter. Eddie's living day to day with or without ~~Venom~~ someone else sharing his body and he's ~~fine~~ ~~mostly okay~~ ~~getting better~~ _slowly_ getting better.

He can tell because, sitting in the back of the SUV, he feels like a person again.

A depressed, probably homeless, loser of a person, But. Still. A. Damn. Person.

==========

Eddie still dreams and still can’t quite remember.

The room is still almost the same. Still split into two even halves by a thick pane of glass (but maybe it’s half again as thin as it was before?) and still dim (but perhaps less dingy and less cold). Eddie could still move and it seems that he has, sitting across from the glass pane leaning back against the wall with his legs crossed over each other. There’s sound now though, Eddie can hear his own quiet breathing and someone else’s distant, impatient footsteps.

On the other side the fog is still thick (but not opaque) and a figure can now be seen shifting and pacing through it.

Every so often a large hand emerges from the fog and trails its ~~claws~~ fingers across the glass, leaving no mark.


	3. Will You Love Me In Spite Of All These Tics And Inconsistencies

Now that Eddie’s a person again, he starts making actual strides in getting better.

He starts with himself. A thorough shower, the first shave in probably a week (the first clean one in definitely over a month), and a fresh change of clothes (not just a clean shirt and pants that pass the sniff test) has him feeling almost competent again.

(someone else also feels a deep satisfaction at Eddie getting his shit together, but again he can’t handle the painful hope that they might be there so he ignores ~~them~~ it)

Eddie goes beyond Annie’s list of bare minimum chores and manages not to get mired in grey stillness on the couch. He eats a small breakfast, but a full lunch, and by the time Dan and Annie both get home for dinner he’s almost ~~starving~~ hungry for the first time since ~~he wasn’t alone~~ ~~he’d been possessed~~ , ~~inhabited~~ , ~~parasitized~~ ( ** _FUCK say Our NAME_** ) they were together.

His day ends in a splitting headache ( ** _WE’RE HERE_** ) that’s gone the next morning.

It’s a slow start but he manages.

(and it probably doesn’t matter that he ends each day with a migraine)

The Monday after the beach he goes to ~~view~~ maybe recover the remains of his Scrambler. Annie had taken care of the insurance while he’d been grey and the bike had been declared totaled due to heavy damage to the front and back of its frame.

He doesn’t have much memory of the crash, just a giddy feeling of adrenaline soaked confidence and after that ~~the rush of being healed and engulfed and feeding for the first time in~~ ~~**_so_ ** **long…** ~~  the terrifying ultimatum on the buoy. The damage is all on the top side of the motorcycle, the front fender’s crumpled along with the handlebars and instrument cluster, the seat is basically scraped off, and both ends of the frame are bent in towards each other. ~~They~~ He must have flipped the poor thing when ~~they~~ he got hit by LIFE’s SUV.

Eddie ends up buying it back from the insurance company at the salvage price, cutting his payout in half, but he’s feeling poetic and metaphorical (because he knows he can salvage something from the Scrambler and if he can do that then maybe he can salvage something out of the wreck of his life) and (along with someone else) he’s so desperately glad to be feeling again that he doesn’t care. The tires are nice enough that they mostly make up for it anyway, and it’s only a slight struggle for him and Dan to roll the crooked thing onto the rented trailer behind Anne’s SUV.

He spends the evening with Annie and Dan (and mostly he doesn’t miss what he and Annie had, and mostly he’s glad that he somehow has a sort of friendship with her, and he’s a little bit in awe of how Dan is somehow building a connection with his girlfriend’s ex fiance who tried to strangle him). There’s a sense of peace and contentment that’s not just his and, with all that’s happened, Eddie leans into it instead of denying it ( ** _YES_** ).

The headache doesn’t start up until he’s almost asleep on the couch and Eddie burrows deeper into the blankets in an attempt to get to sleep before it gets too bad rather than do anything about it.

=========

It’s more real than a dream and this time Eddie remembers.

The room is fresh and clean, lit by a bright warm light source that doesn’t seem to exist but still lights the room evenly enough. The space still divided in two equally sized areas but the glass between the two spaces has changed. It’s thin and damaged covered in radiating cracks and long scratches made by giant claws (something has been trying to ~~get out~~ ~~escape~~ return to Eddie for a long time). All that’s left of the fog is a dense mist along the floor behind the glass.

This time Eddie’s upright, leaning against the wall, looking through the glass where ~~something~~ nothing looms in the shadowed corners.

Your mind is very good at protecting itself no one says.

Too bad it does it in the Most Infuriatingly STUPID WAYS! No one screams before flying out of the dark misty corners opposite Eddie.

Nothing strikes the glass with terrifying strength and it fucking bows out under the pressure.

We Are Not NOTHING, **_EDDIE!_ ** Someone is pounding giant, inky fists against the glass and it shakes and it cracks and it finally, FINALLY shatters.

Venom pushes their way through the remaining glass and it crumbles around them dissolving as it hits the floor. All the aggression melts from their body as they approach Eddie and by the time they reach him they’re almost meek. It’s so incongruent, but Eddie can’t give a shit about that right now because Venom, the missing piece of Them that he’d thought dead, is crouched before him

 **Eddie,** They press their head against his chest, **I am still here. We are still Venom.**

All Eddie can do is clutch at the curve of Venom’s lower jaw and wake up.

=========

Eddie wakes, lying on his back on Annie and Dan’s couch breathing deeply with tears tracking down his temples and into his hairline.

“Venom?” He whispers, staring through the darkness at ceiling.

 **_Here._ ** They soothe in the back of Eddie’s mind and a tension he hadn’t even realized he had melted out of him.

The headache from earlier is gone.

“Where were you?”

 **_Inside, for too long, I was too tired, and then you built yourself up around me and I couldn’t reach you._ ** They sound almost mournful.

“Sorry.” It doesn’t seem like enough, but Eddie can feel Venom nosing around the shape of the sentiment, all the complicated shapes and angles and grief of it, and coming away comforted and satisfied.

 **_Didn’t think you would hurt so badly without Us, hoped we could both live, but…_ ** They trail off hesitantly, **_I did not want to kill another host._ **

The emotions that come with that admission have Eddie reaching up to his chest and a small amount of Venom’s mass emerging to meet his fingers. They tangle themselves around Eddie’s fingertips, imprinting the ridges of his finger prints on their sleek flesh.

“We’re gonna do this whole…” Eddie makes a vague, sleepy gesture with his free hand, “Everything thing together, right.”

 ** _We will_** , They purr and Eddie falls back to sleep with a smile on his face.

=========

Together, Eddie and Venom manage to be a functional enough human being to show Annie that they won’t regress as soon as they aren’t staying on her couch (I’m a call away, Eddie, please, let me know if I can help).

Together, they convince Dan that Eddie won’t drop dead as soon as they start walking down the street with all of the clothes that Annie had salvaged in a duffel bag (They kept their promise, they fixed me).

Together, they promise to get help before it gets that bad again (Annie gives Eddie a list of hotlines and Dan gives him a list of various psychiatrists and psychologists and a promise to refer him to whichever he wants) and they actually mean it even though they will never let it get to that point ever again.

Together, Eddie and Venom move back to his old studio apartment, freshly cleaned and repaired better than it had been (thank you Annie for being five steps ahead and apparently intimately familiar with the San Francisco landlord-tenant act).

Together, they discover that someone (Eddie assumes Dan and his surgeon salary) has dealt with the utility companies (the power’s on and the water runs at least) and Venom gets a lesson on utilities and bills and adulting in general (overly complicated but they’re willing to acknowledge the necessity).

Eddie manages to get a few freelance writing jobs (both under a pen-name, dealing with whatever topics he gets assigned, and under his own name, dealing with scientific ethics which is fucking hilarious), and Venom is surprisingly helpful when it comes to grasping that one perfect word that’s just out of reach.

Venom recovers and learns and spends every moment they can present in the forefront of Eddie’s mind (emotions and commentary and questions flowing freely), if they have their way Eddie will never have cause to believe them dead again.

They have missteps and setbacks (as Eddie has long learned: it’s easier to dig yourself into a pit than it is to pull yourself out), but neither of them is alone anymore.

They get better slowly and not all at once.

But they do get better.

**Author's Note:**

> The fic title and chapter titles are all from Frightened Rabbit's song 'Dead Now'.
> 
> If you are considering suicide [please seek help](http://www.suicidestop.com/suicide_prevention_chat_online.html).


End file.
